Theory & Design: Morality in games

Ultima IV, Fable, and Quest for Glory IV - games about morality

Games about moral choices have been around for ages. Most games take a dualist approach, with a "good" path and an "evil" path (Black & White, Fable, pretty much every Dungeons & Dragons Game), sometimes going so far as to literally reward you with "light side" and "dark side" points for every decision you make, as in these screenshots from Knights of the Old Republic:

You gain "dark side points" for picking fights with this drunk

You gain "light side points" by defending this man against his debt collectors

Other games take a much more agnostic approach and refuse to pass judgment on good or bad, but simply try to "realistically" model consequences for your actions. If you steal from a shopkeeper, he isn't going to like you anymore, or if you become hyper-violent, your more scrupulous allies won't trust you anymore, for instance (Deus Ex, Elder Scrolls). To add complexity and depth, some designers opt to add "gray areas," moral choices with no clear right or wrong, to create "moral dilemmas" (Planescape: Torment, Knights of the Old Republic II) However, what should be noted is that all of these approaches assume the same thing - that the player should be presented with choices that are obviously and clearly labeled as conscious choices.

The awareness of Choice

The difference in real life from the experience in video games is we aren't presented with the obviousness of these choices. When I snap at a friend because I'm tired and stressed, I know it's wrong but it doesn't really feel like a choice. When I act rudely out of spite, I do so mostly because I don't think, not because I've calmly and rationally decided the best course of action would be to act like a jackass.

Nowhere in our lives does a big text box pop up that says,

If everything was put that simply (minus the satire), it would be a lot easier to be kind and unselfish. This is the kind of beat-you-over-the-head moralizing I'd like to stay away from in Little Monster. Not because I dislike moralizing, in fact, it could be argued that all stories moralize on some level (even if it your goal NOT to moralize, or to deny morals, that is still putting forth a kind of moral agenda).

I just want to be more subtle with my morality story - without falling into moral relativism in which there is no good or evil.

Other features of Choice

But there's more to the nature of choice than just how obvious it is that you're making a decision. I'd like to point out a few cliches when it comes to game choices before I proceed. First off is:

The Non-choice choice.

This strip from Legendary sounds like a joke, but this scene is endlessly replayed in RPG's: "But Thou Must!"

The problem with the non-choice choice is that the player is given a "choice," but his response doesn't matter. In the end, the question is repeated until he gives the "right" answer. There are plenty of times in a game where the player will be implicitly expected to go along with certain things; in this case, there's no need to ask him, especially if the designer doesn't plan on letting him go through with the "wrong" answer.

The next cliche is...

The Karma Bar

Rather than deal with thousands of possible branches, some designers take the "karma" approach, where every decision you make adds or subtracts points to your virtual soul-o-meter, and this value will dictate certain branching paths later in the game; ie, only good characters can get the good ending, and only bad characters will get the bad ending.

From Quest for Glory 4. Good and bad deeds compressed into one convenient moral "credit score", called "Honor" in this particular game

The "Karma Bar" has become a standard approach to morality in games. The problem with it is twofold:

It is overly simplistic (giving money to 10 beggars cancels out 1 murder???)
It is directly visible to the player ("My fellow Americans, you can trust me to do the right thing because my morality score is 85%...")

The problem with this is that it leads to rampant "gaming" of the system, making a disconnect between the player's own sense of morality and that of the character he is role-playing. Combine this with the player's desire to maxmize score in the game, and morality quickly becomes nothing more than a parody of Utilitarianism, and just a means to an end to getting the next power-up.

One of the problems

Designers want to make big, long, epic games. The problem then is that you can't have the player sidelining your perfectly crafted story with his meddlesome free will. The designer is given two choices: either buckle down and make extra content for each possible path the player might take, or impose a Calvinistic tyranny on him and obliterate his ability to make choices that have any real outcome on the game.

I have a friend who spent 200 hours finishing a single campaign of this game.

I think what's needed therefore is to build choice into the game as a real feature rather than as an afterthought. Make choice-making the bread and butter of the game rather than a "value-add." With a long game, the player is so worn out by the entire experience that he isn't interested in playing it again; whereas if the game is fairly short, the player can be expected to play through it two, three, maybe even four times. In this way, we can take the same amount of content that would be used to make a "long" game and space it out over the size of a medium or short sized game, and actually give the player some meaningful freedom.

Portal and Ico are both clear examples of incredibly short games that are incredibly memorable. You don't need a long game for it to be epic!

One of the solutions

People will read through their favorite novel several times in their lives. People will watch favorite movies again and again. However, it's very doubtful that mere mortals will read War and Peace more than once or twice, even if they really, really, liked it. So media that doesn't take too long to finish is actually quite enjoyable and has plenty of "replay value" even without any of the content changing the second time around. So imagine if we took our epic, super-long 60-hour games and used all that extra content to make the game not only shorter, but have more meaningful choice? That's not even a trade off: it's a win-win situation for the player!

The linear story gives the most authorial control, and the longest guaranteed play experience

Faux branching gives the illusion of choice while maintaining authorial control and a fairly long play experience

True branching gives real choice, but play experience is much shorter; game content must be split between each path

Here, the author maintains some control, the player gets the illusion of a good bit of choice, and at the end, the sum total of his actions can actually and meaningfully change the ending

The Virtual Conscience

Let's get back to morality and choices. Most games act by making every choice equally obvious as a choice. Some games will give you a little advisor like a fairy (Legend of Zelda), or even the little "shoulder angel / devil" pair (Black & White) that is featured so commonly featured in popular media.

Howard Tayler's Schlock Mercenary pokes fun at pop culture cliches.

Not only does this spell right out what the "right" choice is, thus short-circuiting most thinking on the player's part, our real-world consciousness don't exactly do this. For the most part, we already know what we believe to be right and wrong. Human beings are ruled mostly be habit. So our consciences are mostly there to remind us of who we have decided we are. A good man's conscience tries to remind him that he is a good man and should look to the needs of others, whereas a selfish man's conscience serves to remind him to look out for number one. This is done mostly be reminding us of when choices are present, rather than just telling us what the right thing to do is. We already know that stealing is wrong. We just need to be reminded that taking Bob's lunch out of the breakroom fridge is indeed stealing.

Nous - The Little Monster's Virtual Conscience

In Little Monster, you really control two characters who act as one: The Little Monster, and a flying heart-shaped creature called Nous. Nous' purpose is to serve as a virtual cosncience for the player.

First, a little etymology: Nous takes his name from the same Greek Word, which was used by Greek philosophers, and later by the early Christian Orthodox church (with a slightly different meaning). The word can have many senses, some of which include "soul," "mind," or "will." The easiest way for me to explain it while still sticking pretty close to the mark is to use the common english rendering, "the eyes of the heart."

The idea is that your Nous guides you and at the same time is a reflection of who you are and is a part of who you are. The Orthodox concept of "theosis", which is the lifestyle of by which Orthodox Christians seek to abide in the Lord, abstain from sin, and ever so slowly become more like God, can be seen as the act of cleansing or healing the Nous. If the Nous is sick, then that person is spiritually sick, and will be blind to his own sickness. As I am but an unschooled layman in the Orthodox church, feel free to read this article for a more complete explanation.

Meet Nous, a metaphor for the Little Monster's will & mind - "the eyes of the heart."

Nous is one of the central game mechanics in Little Monster.

In cases where choices have a "right" and "wrong" value to them, in addition to the in-game consequences thereof, the value of the choice will be recorded by the game. But rather than store the "moral value" of these choices in a karma bar measuring the players goodness or badness, it will simply be used to determine whether Nous will become more or less sensitive to moral and ethical behavior.

So, if the player acts kindly and unselfishly, Nous will become more sensitive to goodness and point out new opportunities the player might not have noticed otherwise. If the player acts selfishly and/or cruelly, Nous' eyes will become dull, and he will not notice the needs of other, and fail to point them out to the Little Monster. So Nous' character becomes an exaggeration of the player's choices. To quote the Holy Scriptures and Johnny Cash's "When the Man Comes Around" at the same time, "Let him who is righteous, let him be righteous still. Let him who is filthy, let him be filthy still."

So although the game reflects my world-view, the player is free to reject it if he so chooses, just as we have free will in life.

If you play selfishly, all you have to do to make your conscience leave you alone is to start ignoring it. If you play unselfishly, every act of goodness will make you more and more aware of other things you can and should be doing. This models how in real life bad people think they're decent folk, and truly good people are aware of how much work they have yet to do. A house filled with cockroaches looks clean when the lights are all off, but a house that is illumined brings the smallest speck of dirt on the walls into sharp relief.

But this isn't enough. Players hate it when an obvious choice isn't avaiable to them because their character "doesn't know about it yet." Like a game where you see a wounded character in need of aid, but the choice to help him isn't made available until a townsperson informs you that there is a man outside in need of medical attention.

Also, the player shouldn't be completely hedged in by his previous actions. Just as the thief on the cross was allowed to repent of his sins up until his very last breath, so should The Little Monster, no matter how despicable he becomes, be allowed to make a "righteous" moral choice, even if Nous has become too darkened to point it out for him. As long as the climb back to righteousness may be, it should always still be open.

The player himself can in this case start to over-ride his corrupted conscience and begin to clean and heal Nous, who has been tainted by his evil choices - no more obvious text boxes at moments of critical moral importance. (In most cases, however, not recognizing a pertinent moral choice will not count against Nous' vision in the same way that consciously making a bad one will.) The difference is, a player with an evil Nous will have a much harder time seeing good to do, because Nous will give him no help, and in fact might start giving him bad advice, to lead him further away from the path of righteousness.

Basically, your conscience has inertia. One of the meta-games in Little Monster is opening the eyes of your heart so that by the end, you will be in a state where the right choice is more obvious to you. At any time, you can make the right choice yourself, but you will be flailing around in the dark, without the aid of your conscience.

Application

Let's take a classic "good samaritan" situation where you pass by a wounded stranger lying on the road. (Please enjoy my cheap storyboards)

As illustrated above, if Nous is particularly attuned to goodness, you will not be able to walk by without being told that the man is near death and needs help immediately.

If Nous' eyes are clouded, however, you will just walk right by. Should you the player go right up to the man and click on him to investigate, it will become clear that he needs help, and you are then presented with the choice.

If Nous has been completely infected with darkness, he will tell you nothing, and if you try to investigate, he will try to rationalize you away from the right decision.

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